


sometimes our happiness is captured.

by LLReid



Series: kamilah’s forever. [3]
Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Annie’s POV, Canon LGBTQ Character, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Soulmates, Same-Sex Marriage, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 02:54:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29769612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Inspired by; How Does A Moment Last Forever by Céline Dion.~~~~“But mama, we’re having a war and we need weapons!,” Zahra said matter of factly as she continued whacking her dolls together. “They’re fighting to the death. Poppy,” she held up the doll in the spacesuit, “is an alien invading Earth and she wants to behead all the foolish mortals and stab them in the eyes with her lightsabers.” She held up the doll wrapped in tinfoil, “Ella is a vampire who slays dragons and stabs people for the queen and shes the only one powerful enough to stop her because she’s also a Bloodkeeper.” The tiara she was wearing fell down over her eyes and she pushed it back up with an irritated sigh that was all Kamilah. “I’m the time travelling alien fairy queen who wants to enslave the human race and steal all their daggers— and all my toys are the audience in the gladiator arena where they’re fighting.”Both of their jaws dropped.“Oh, um... who is winning, Ella or Poppy?”“Really?,” Kamilah hissed. “That’s the most pressing question you can think to ask right now?”
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Series: kamilah’s forever. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2108751
Comments: 14
Kudos: 21





	sometimes our happiness is captured.

It wasn’t often Anastasia couldn’t escape getting home from work late, as since the birth of Jax and Zahra both she and Kamilah had been extremely insistent that their work schedules be altered. That way they’d always be there to enjoy breakfast in the mornings and walk them to school, and they’d alternate days so that at least one of them would finish early so there would always be a parent available to pick them up at the end of the day and manage the childcare until the other could get away from work in time for dinner.

Both of them being CEOs meant that they had a great deal more control over their workloads than most other people did, so they knew they were very lucky that they didn’t have to rely on a nanny to help with the childcare duties. Even on the rare day that neither of them could get away for pick up duty at 3pm, there were two devoted aunties and an uncle who always jumped at the chance to help out and spoil their niece and nephew.

The penthouse looked the exact way it had when she’d left that morning as she stepped out of the elevator. Warm. Lived in. Inviting. Unrecognisable as the museum-like cold and clinical place it’d been when Kamilah had first brought her here all those years ago. Two tiny pairs of brightly coloured Hunter rain boots sat right at the elevator; one pink pair and one yellow, and hung on hooks nailed into the wall at the perfect height for two six year olds to reach were two raincoats; one ombré teal and light blue coloured one from The Disney Store with a picture of Ariel on the lower right side by the zipper and a brightly coloured yellow and purple starfish on the hood, and the other electric blue and covered in little pictures of the characters from Toy Story. A baby blue Sailor Moon backpack with numerous Hello Kitty and Spongebob keychains attached to it sat beside the pink rain boots and a black and yellow Pokemon one with so many Disney keychains on it that you could hardly even see the zippers sat beside the yellow pair. 

Gone was the expensive minimalistic decor that Kamilah had decked the place out with when she’d lived alone, as Anastasia made her way inside she passed by numerous framed photos and childish pieces of artwork hung proudly on the walls. There was even a fort made of blankets built in the corner of the living room that was lit up by a LED star projector lamp and was being guarded by two giant stuffed unicorns holding a pair of Kamilah’s ancient swords... and they had been wrapped in makeshift tinfoil suits of armour decorated with Hello Kitty bandaids and neon coloured glitter glue.

“My love,” Kamilah beamed as she wandered into the kitchen to find her loading the dishwasher. “I— you look exhausted. Have you eaten? Are you alright? Did some mewling mortal do something to sour your mood?”

“I’m alright but today was so hectic I don’t think I could bring myself to eat right now even if I wanted to,” she sighed happily as she wrapped her arms around her waist and buried her face in her neck, inhaling her familiar lavender scent. 

Kamilah nuzzled her hair. “I have been salivating all day— how did it go? Tell me the US Space Force are actually run by intelligent individuals and have chosen to partner with Raines Corps’ aerospace department rather than Nasa and SpaceX.”

At that her lips turned upwards into a smile and she leaned back to look her in the eyes. “Yup. We won.”

Kamilah whisked her off her feet at that and she threw her arms around her neck and kissed her, and when she did, the ancient vampire spun her in a circle. She really was her biggest supporter and since the moment she’d first told her of her ambitions to expand Raines Corps’ reach she’d held an unwavering sense of belief in her.

“I knew you could do it,” Kamilah smiled against her lips. “Your proposal was excellent— now tell me exactly what it is they’ve given you.”

She could only giggle in response as her wife kept kissing her and mumbling her pride between kisses. The heat of her, the smell of her, the feel of her, the taste of her was all so incredibly brilliant that every time she kissed her it somehow managed to surpass anything her memory could conjure up.

God, she had the most beautiful laugh, and that smile. Jesus, it still knocked the breath right out of her.

“It is worth $30 million under the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 contract that will allow them to monitor and study data we collect on our commercial and civil space missions,” she explained, still practically shaking with excitement. “They wanted me to sign a five year contract with them and they would’ve increased the money significantly but I basically told them to shove it up their asses and we’d see if I was satisfied at the end of our agreed upon year, then we’d renegotiate— I remember what you said about government contracts, so even though it seemed alright I refused.”

“Good girl— clever, clever girl,” Kamilah beamed. “In these sort of situations involving government agencies you must always hold the upper hand, whilst you must please your client it is simply smart business to ensure they will dance to whichever tune you sing. Agreeing to a five year contract without a trial run would have been a foolish mistake and you’ll likely find that they’ll sweeten the deal considerably at the end of the year when they inevitably wish to keep working with you— the technology you’re developing is decades ahead of any other aerospace manufacturers, there is simply no way they’re going to look anywhere else for the information they need.”

“I learned the whole playing hard to get boardroom trick from you,” she giggled, kissing her brow as Kamilah spun her around again. “I was literally channeling you the whole time and I think I nearly called someone a mewling mortal at one point— it was a whole thing.”

Kamilah’s smike widened. “I could hardly even focus on my own meetings, I was so excited for you.”

She tightened her legs around Kamilah’s waist to keep steady and kissed her lips again, and it was like every other amazing kiss she'd given her over the years, multiplied ten-fold. She kissed her until they both could hardly breathe, and then kissed a little more, until they had to pull back, panting so hard that their chests were heaving.

“Thank you for supporting me, love,” she murmured as she was returned to her feet. “And for switching early days with me.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” smiled Kamilah. 

Before she could even ask how the kids had been since coming home from school the question died on her lips as a chorus of loud bangs and the word ‘die’ being yelled by Zahra in at least three different languages echoed from the playroom. The sound of Jax yelling at her to be quiet because he was trying to read muddled with the banging and frantic screams... and then came what sounded unmistakably like a toy lightsaber being whacked against something, mimicking the sound effects from the Star Wars movies.

“I swear on all that is holy if they are having yet another intergalactic war and swinging those damned plastic weapons at each other’s head yet again— it is a wonder nobody has knocked out a fang!,” Kamilah lamented as they both started off for the playroom. 

Yet when they got to the large room at the top of the stairs they didn’t find the kids beating the shit out of each other with plastic lightsabers as they’d expected. Instead Jax was up in the reading loft with a Where’s Waldo book in his hands, looking down the ladder and yelling at his sister, who was sat on the floor wearing a sparkly purple figure skating competition costume, pink and purple tie dye fairy wings with pom-poms and ribbons hanging from them, a pair of her YSL Stilettos that were still much too big for her, dark red lipstick on her face like war paint, and a plastic tiara on her head, and she was yelling right back at him as viciously as any six year old was capable of.

“What on Earth is going on here?,” Kamilah asked.

“She— mommy’s home! Hi mommy,” Jax beamed, giving her a wave from up in his hiding place. He was in the odd phase children had when they became obsessed with bandaids and a few of the brightly coloured bandaids decorating both of his arms for absolutely no reason besides the fact he liked them fell off at the gesture. “We had sushi for dinner and I painted a picture of a butterfly in school today and I learned how to spell ‘dinosaur’ backwards.”

“That’s wonderful, sweetheart.”

“Hi mommy,” Zahra beamed, drawing her attention away from the American Girl dolls in her hands for only a second before going right back to whatever game she’d been playing. “I painted a goblin wearing a lion costume and my teacher said she asked us to paint our favourite animal and goblins weren’t real— so I told her they were and that I technically still did what I was asked cause he was dressed up like a lion and he looked pretty. The Clan Sayeed bodyguards who check on us at school agreed that he was a very pretty goblin and they liked that I gave him blue nail polish.”

“That’s amazing— which one of us will be hanging that one in our office?”

“It’s so good it’s going on the refrigerator when I bring it home on Friday.”

Kamilah cleared her throat and said, “Now does someone want to tell us what was happening? It’s sounded like you were killing each other.”

“She’s disturbing me and I almost found Waldo!,” Jax wailed. “And she stole some of my stuffies and she’s making them play her stupid game and they don’t want to play her game because it’s stupid. She says because she’s six minutes older than me I have to do what she says and let her use my stuffies but she’s being mean to them!”

She and Kamilah shared a bewildered glance but their attention was quickly drawn away from each other when Zahra once again began screaming the word ‘die’ and whacking her doll’s faces together. It’d somehow managed to slip their attention that she was sitting in the centre of a circle made out of numerous dolls and stuffed animals, all of which were holding one of Kamilah’s daggers, and one of the dolls in her hand was dressed up like an astronaut and the other had been wrapped in tin foil that was decorated with Frozen bandaids, making what looked to be a suit of armour, complete with a makeshift helmet with numerous neon feathers from their arts and crafts supplies stuck on it. One of Kamilah’s prized medieval swords sat at her side and three different toy lightsabers were lit up within her arm’s reach.

“Zahra,” Kamilah deadpanned. “What have I told you about playing with my weapons?”

“But mama, we’re having a war and we need weapons!,” Zahra said matter of factly as she continued whacking her dolls together. “They’re fighting to the death. Poppy,” she held up the doll in the spacesuit, “is an alien invading Earth and she wants to behead all the foolish mortals and stab them in the eyes with her lightsabers.” She held up the doll wrapped in tinfoil, “Ella is a vampire who slays dragons and stabs people for the queen and shes the only one powerful enough to stop her because she’s also a Bloodkeeper.” The tiara she was wearing fell down over her eyes and she pushed it back up with an irritated sigh that was all Kamilah. “I’m the time travelling alien fairy queen who wants to enslave the human race and steal all their daggers— and all my toys are the audience in the gladiator arena where they’re fighting.”

Both of their jaws dropped.

It was clear to Anastasia that Kamilah didn’t remember playing games like this when she was a kid either... and literally none of the parenting books had prepared them for this— their daughter’s imagination was something else.

“Oh, um... who is winning, Ella or Poppy?”

“Really?,” Kamilah hissed. “That’s the most pressing question you can think to ask right now?”

“I literally don’t know what else to say,” she muttered below her breath.

“Neither of them are winning because I’ve just entered the arena and people have started running cause I’m also a giant,” she stated matter of factly as she gestured to the numerous dolls and teddy bears that had obviously been thrown around the room.

That explained some of the banging.

“She stabbed my stegosaurs with mama’s sword and some of the fluffy stuff inside her came out and I had to patch her up with my Mickey Mouse bandaids,” Jax pouted. 

“Zahra,” she sighed. “What have we told you about stabbing your brother’s stuffies?”

“He is the alien attack dog, not a stegosaurus!,” Zahra growled as she whacked her dolls heads together again. “He had to die because he tried to bite a two headed dragon’s heads off but they grew back and now he has seventy-five heads because he’s a Hydra.” She gestured to a plastic dragon figurine with numerous fuzzy pipe-cleaners wound around its neck with bits of brightly coloured paper with faces drawn on them stuck on the ends. “Some of the heads are invisible. That’s why you can’t see them all.”

“Daisy is a girl stegosaurus!,” Jax whined. “Don’t call her he.”

She cleared her throat and reached down over the circle of toys that surrounded Zahra, plucking the sharpened sword from her in one swift movement. “Apologise to Jax, please.”

Zahra sat down her dolls and looked at the sword longingly. “But mommy—“

“No buts. It’s not nice to damage other people’s things without permission, honey, no matter what game you’re playing,” she calmly explained. “How would you feel if someone stabbed Ella or Poppy?”

She sighed. “Bad...”

“Exactly,” Kamilah said as she went around the circle and began gathering the daggers that had been stolen from their display cases. “And I have told you before not to use your abilities to reach my weapons. These are not toys and they are not blunt like the ones you train with. You could seriously hurt yourself or your brother if you take it upon yourself to treat them like your plastic lightsabers.”

“I’m sorry for stealing the weapons and for stabbing Daisy and calling her a he.” She twirled one of her pigtails around her hand and quickly added, “but in my defence she was playing a boy alien attack dog called Jaws—“

“Like the shark?,” Jax asked.

Zahra nodded. “Yeah. She might be a stegosaurus but she’s a very good actress— she can have one of my Hello Kitty bandaids to make her feel pretty.”

Jax smiled. “Ok. We’re friends again then.”

Zahra looked up at them. “Well if I can’t play with the weapons can you guys pretend to be evil alien fairy soldiers and stab the mortals who are hoarding the universe’s daggers?”

“I— you want us to what?,” Kamilah snorted.

Zahra ran to the dress up box across the room and pulled out two sets of sparkly fairy wings. She handed her the silver pair and Kamilah the royal blue pair, then gestured for them to bend down so she could reach their faces. Kamilah went first and flinched the moment her favourite tube of Fenty lipstick was produced and dragged along her cheeks, readying her for the bizarre game they were about to be apart of. 

“I want to play,” Jax said as he climbed down from the reading loft and ran to the dress up box. “What should I be?”

“You can be the Hydra dragon’s baby,” Zahra said. “Put on your T. Rex costume and then the gold fairy wings— and you have to try to save the mortals with my Ella doll but she’s your arch enemy so you turn on her and kill her and then save the mortals yourself... which are the rest of our toys.”

“And what do we have to do?,” she laughed as the tube of lipstick was drawn over her cheeks. 

“Try to stop Jax from saving the mortals because we’re mean fairy aliens.”

Back when she first met Kamilah if someone had told her there would ever come a time she’d see her pretending to be a fairy alien battling stuffed animals being floated psychically around the room wearing bright blue fairy wings with lipstick on her face, she’d never have believed it. Yet there they were. Running around their children’s playroom like certifiably deranged lunatics— and games like this happened so often it didn’t even feel anywhere nearly as bizarre as it actually was.

Just the night before they’d pretended to be mermaids in the pool for a good two hours. Then the night before that they’d taken them out for ice cream and gotten quite a few odd looks as they ran through Manhattan like spies on a secret mission, all because Jax had suggested they pretend to be secret agents. And a few nights before that they’d crawled around the penthouse on their hands and knees with a child each on their backs whilst pretending to be unicorns.

Even when she was pregnant she never would’ve imagined that Kamilah would ever willingly take part in these games as often as she did. She’d always known she’d be a great mother, yet she’d somehow surpassed each and every one of her expectations.

To everyone else Kamilah was demanding to the point of being utterly ruthless in her demands. And was she demanding? Hell yes, but she wasn’t ever selfish. In the boardroom and as the head of Clan Sayeed she took and she was ruthless. But at home, with her and the kids, she gave them back so much. Not just materially but emotionally, though she’d likely deny she did any such thing.

It always made her happy to see how different their children’s relationship was to the one she’d had with her mother growing up. Her own mother wouldn’t have dreamed of playing with her the way they played with Jax and Zahra. Her own mother wouldn’t have dreamed about kneeling at the side of the bathtub every night and allowing herself to be squirted in the face with the little toy water guns the twins loved to play with in the water. She wouldn’t have put a bubble beard on her face or laughed when she positioned her shampoo covered hair into a giant spike. Yet she and Kamilah did all of that, and they made sure to do it every single night.

“What jammies do you guys want?,” Kamilah asked as she finished washing the lipstick off of her face and glanced over at the massive bathtub where both twins were practically submerged in lavender scented bubbles after Jax had poured far too much into the warm water.

“The ones with Darth Vader on them,” Zahra said before blowing bubbles off of her rubber Bruce The Shark — the one from Jaws, not Finding Nemo — bath toy that Lily had played with as a kid and had given her when she’d taken a liking to it. 

“I want my Kung Fu Panda ones,” Jax said whilst perfecting the bubble beard and moustache her was making on her face as she knelt at the side of the tub.

“Darth Vader and Kung Fu Panda,” Kamilah repeated, wandering out the bathroom door as Zahra pulled the plug in the water. Thursday night was her night to pull the plug, just as it was her day to push the buttons in the elevator. It was a well worn argument that had resulted in them actually thinking up a day-by-day system.

“I had fun playing tonight,” Zahra murmured as she wrapped herself in her Scarlet Witch towel. It was clear both kids had tired themselves out and would likely be falling asleep the moment their heads hit the pillows. 

“Me too,” Jax yawned whilst drying himself off with his Spongebob towel. “I liked the part when I defeated mama with Mace Windu’s lightsaber and then she pretended to be a Hydra dragon too because her fairy alien character died.”

She smiled at the memory of Kamilah throwing herself dramatically over the two giant bean bag chairs that sat by the windows in the playroom and grabbed the detangling spray that needed to be sprayed in both kids wet hair before even attempting to get a comb through it. “What about you, Zahra? What was your favourite part?”

Zahra hummed as the L’oréal Kids tangle tamer was sprayed onto her hair. “I liked the part when me and you were defeated, mommy, and mama and Jax banished us to the reading loft and we pretended it was our spaceship and we went back to space.”

“Oooh that part was funny,” Jax agreed, screwing his nose up as his hair was sprayed. “What was your favourite part, mommy?”

She ushered both kids over to their stools in front of the mirror and watched as they began combing out their own hair, knowing that Zahra was going to need some help as her little arms couldn’t reach the end of her waist length hair and she didn’t believe that pulling it over her shoulders would lessen the burden.

“I think I liked the part when we put on the Guardians Of The Galaxy soundtrack,” she smiled as Kamilah reappeared with the jammies. “What was your favourite part of tonight, babe?”

“I think my fairy alien character died a fairly valiant death,” she said without missing a beat, “but I must admit I think I made a better dragon than a fairy.”

“A hydra dragon,” Zahra corrected her with a smile. “You had over two million heads by the time mommy and I went back to space.”

Kamilah snorted and cast her a bemused look. “Did you hear that, my love? Two million heads.”

She didn’t even need to say the terrible dirty joke she would’ve made if the kids weren’t there for her to know exactly what she was thinking. Absolute dork that she was.

It was in the small day-to-day moments like this one that she was reminded that beauty, happiness, they were things so big nobody could accurately capture them with all the scientific words in the world. They were things so powerful and awe inspiring it was like what people centuries beforehand had once called magic.

She understood why many parents seemed to lose track of themselves and their kids in the day-to-day routine of their lives. Why it seemed that one moment you were holding a newborn, then you blinked, and your kid was all grown up. It still baffled her at times that the kids were somehow six years old already— yet in some weird way it also felt like they’d always had them.

Watching Kamilah jokingly inspect the freshly brushed smiles that were now littered with a few missing teeth, it was hard to imagine there was ever a time that making sure two growing vampires brushed their fangs properly wasn’t a part of her nightly routine. The children had started calling her the Tooth Fairy one night and it’d stuck, so now every night they insisted that she be the one to supervise the teeth brushing.

They were the only two people in the world who could call Kamilah Sayeed the Tooth Fairy without winding up with a dagger protruding from their skull and they didn’t even realise it. It somehow only made it seem funnier to her.

Every night Anastasia watched her wife as they sat on the children’s beds and read their bedtime story, then shared any random story they could think of that happened before they were born. So far they’d told them about the time Lily had put Gorilla Glue in her hair. The time they’d vacationed on Adrian’s yacht and Kamilah rode a water slide for the first time in her life. She’d told them silly stories of her time at boarding school, like; the time she’d lived in a closet for a week, or the time she’d accidentally blown up a microwave and wound up banned from the Home Economics department for life, or the time she’d almost cut her finger off whilst making a wooden pencil box in Technical. And Kamilah had told them some of her stories, too, but most of them were about her adventures with Lysimachus that had happened before she’d Turned.

She’d get this wistful look in her eyes as she told the children of their Uncle Lysi — as they called him — and of their grandparents. Jax and Zahra were always too wrapped up in her stories and asking their questions that they never sensed her sadness, especially when she spoke of her mother. Since becoming a mother herself Kamilah thought of her mother more often than she had in a long time... she’d broken down in her arms quite a few times because of how much she missed her.

“She’d be proud of you, you know,” she said softly as they tiptoed down the stairs. “Your mom.”

Kamilah didn’t reply right away but a subtle smile tugged at the corners of her lips, and the moment they reached the living room where classical music was still playing softly over the speakers, she pulled her into her arms and began slow dancing with her. She wrapped one arm around her waist, and cupped her nape with her other hand. When she kissed her there was none of the restraint she’d seen at the beginning of their relationship. It was like kissing an inferno. Hot, breathless, so overwhelming that her senses shattered.

“I wish she could’ve met you.” Her voice came right at her ear was hardly even a whisper, her hands slowly tracing over her sides. “That she could’ve met them. That she could’ve seen the woman I’m capable of being because you love me— part of me is glad she never got to see me at my worst but now that I am at my best... I just...”

“I know,” she whispered, turning her head to kiss her cheek. 

“She would’ve loved you.” She tugged her closer so that there wasn’t even an inch of space between their bodies. “I was the sort of strong willed child that makes Zahra seem positively mellow and she always used to say that there was no one alive who was strong enough to tame me. I suppose she was correct, as I had to wait more than two thousand years to find you.” She moved one of her hands up so that it was buried in her hair, cupping the back of her head. “You would’ve been adopted as one of her own the moment you told me to do something and I actually listened.”

She huffed in amusement. “Ah, so you’re saying she’d be in on Adrian’s joke when he calls me The Kamilah Whisperer?”

“I’m saying she’d have made it long before it even popped into his head,” chuckled Kamilah. “Lysi would say it every time he saw you— and they’d both take pride in tormenting me. My father would’ve also been amused by the fact I actually listen to you, as he was often frazzled by my disobedience.” She paused. “They’d know you are something special, my love. With a heart that’s way too big for its own good. They’d see that I worry for you because you don’t always see everyone for who they are. Because you’re too busy looking for the good in old fools like me— and they’d laugh at the fact I've tried to get you to adopt some cynicism, but they’d agree with me in that the truth of the matter is, you wouldn't be the same woman if you did. They’d all understand a moment after seeing us together that I’m utterly lost without you, that you’ve shown me how it can be with a woman who loves me, and you've shined light on the darkest shadows of my memories.”

She soothingly rubbed her upper back. “I’ll never let you go— and you always talk about how I’ve bettered your life without acknowledging that you’ve also given me reason to really live and not just exist anymore. I don’t think you always realise just how much you’ve changed me.”

“As you once told me, we saved each other.” She smiled and pressed a lingering kiss to her brow and then said, “I can’t imagine what they’d think seeing me pretending to be a— whatever the hell it was I was actually pretending to be tonight. I only know Lysi would never let me live it down.”

“Fairy aliens and hydra dragons,” she giggled. “How did she even come up with that one?”

Kamilah smiled then, an adorable, sweet smile reserved only for her that still took her breath away. She forgot all about everything else in the world. Her inner animal came barreling out, grunting and pounding her chest and muttering unintelligible words. She really was the single most beautiful person she’d ever seen, and even now she alone had the power to make her want. She made her want things she’d never wanted before with anyone else.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she shook her head in bemusement, “but diving over those bloody bean bags as I fell to my death would’ve caused me to pull something in my back or throw out a hip if I were mortal.”

They both started laughing and she nuzzled her cheek against Kamilah’s hair, so happy that they had this. One song bled into another and they remained locked together in a gentle sway, neither willing to break the intimacy that surrounded them, concealing them in the small space the two occupied.

She could’ve happily stayed this way forever. Slow dancing in the living room, artfully dodging the lego bricks that had spilled from the coffee table where the Millennium Falcon was in the process of being built. Forever, just like this. Kamilah in her arms. With her. Wherever life took them. All she wanted her life to be was with her.

That they now existed this way, they were the ultimate proof that people could be so much more than just the sum of their parts, trauma, and knee-jerk impulses. Something about either of them just could not be controlled. In order to thrive, they’d always just had to be free.

~ fin.


End file.
